I was concerned about the colors as well. The scenery seemed very drab and monotone. The first level is all dark greys and blues with the enemies of course sporting outfits of the same colors. I agree wholeheartedly that some extra light contrast (even if it would look unrealistic) would have really helped.

A nice high-contract color scheme would have been nice, especially considering the game the new RotT based off of.

I've just finished a play-though of Quake 1 today and despite Quake often being blamed for starting the heavy-handed brown color scheme that's plaguing today's first person shooters, id did a really great job of using sharp contrasting lights in their maps and made a great effort to utilize compliments such as blue and orange to really make some of the Gothic castles look bold and striking.

I haven't had any real trouble with the platforming sections so far. The bounce pads take some getting used to, since they seem to be unnaturally smaller than the player and most of the jumps require you to "dance" in the air to land correctly. But all in all, I've passed each of the platforming sections with one or two tries. I agree that a lot of the level design is pretty uninspired (especially right in the first episode), and I've also had trouble spotting enemies due to the way they blend into the environment. However, with that said, I've actually warmed up to this quite a bit! Once you finally get past how twitchy the movement is and just throw yourself into it, it's quite a lot of fun. The biggest problem I have with the game so far is that it seems to have some awful framerate issues in really wide areas, even with all the details at the lowest setting. It's really crippling my ability to play!

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the editor as well. Here's hoping that the community will be able to fix the level design issues by providing more clever layouts that better complement the movement and gameplay.

I posted this on Interceptor's ROTT facebook page, and figure since it sums up how I feel about the game it's relevant to post here too:

Ok guys, a srs biz review of the game now that I've played a bit more of it.

The good news is that so far I like it! This is, however, despite many flaws I've found which ultimately make the game feel unfinished and I suspect fairly untested. I realize it's pretty common that games are pretty buggy at release and get quick patches, but even taking that in consideration this thing is a little ridiculously full of bugs. and If you guys were calling this a beta or a release candidate I'd be more lenient, but that's not the case.

I'm sure you guys are fully aware by now of the clipping issues: players being able to pass through props and objects but then getting stuck, missiles not clipping with props (how can I shoot right through a whole truck?), and I'm pretty sure I've had problems getting the hitscan weapons to shoot between railings. These are pretty serious bugs, especially the part about getting stuck for the following reason:

The checkpoint saving SUCKS. DICK. I don't know why you guys added this in the first place, since no serious FPS player I've ever known has ever liked checkpoints. Autosave at the start of each level and leave it up to the player to quicksave as much or as little as they prefer. Additionally, on top of the checkpoint system itself, they are never in a convenient spot before a particularly difficult firefight or one of the maddeningly difficult platforming parts. And that's the next thing I'd like to touch on:

I'm not going to say platforming doesn't belong in FPSs. I love that I can jump around and explore the levels vertically. But the responsiveness of jumping in the game is pretty low; not very much air control for something that's relied upon so heavily. Don't know how to suggest improving this, just that it's annoying being right in front of something, attempting a quick and short jump, and sailing far past it.

Aside from those BIG nitpicks, I only have a few other personal issues that I'd love to see dealt with in the game but aren't game breaking. Bunnyhopping! This game is fast but nowhere near as fast as games like Quake, Warsow, UT, or Nexiuz can get with bunnyhopping. It's also obviously missing a few of the truly unique and frankly awesome multiplayer modes like Eluder, Deluder, and Tag. I was pretty disappointed to find those missing, but I have faith you guys are working on it.

Anyway, like I said: Despite the flaws, I dig the game and it has a ton of potential, it's just pretty obviously unfinished. I wouldn't have minded waiting a little longer to have seen the game without these flaws. Keep up the awesome work, and I hope the hints of DNR you guys dropped in-game are legit. ;D

They released a minor patch today, saw this posted on the community hub for the game on Steam:

Hi Guys.

My name is Frederik Schreiber, and im the Game Director on Rise of the Triad.
First of all, I want to say THANK YOU for a great reception on Day 1.

We are a very small team, who created this game in 1.5 years with literally no budget, spread all over the world. It has been created with the pure love and passion of doing a First Person Shooter we would love to play.

Day 1 is never without issues, and we are looking into every single thread you guys have posted, offering help, performance tweaks and guides on how to improve the game.

We have just released Patch 1.0.1.
The first patch will not address most of the current issues (Patches are usually in development before the game release), but will address more Game Breaking issues - Getting actual LAN to work.

Below is the changelog for Patch 1.0.1:

- Offline LAN visibility in the Server Browser now works properly
- UE3 Game Braking Debug Commands (F1-12) now disabled

We are currently working on a big Patch - 1.1 - Which will address many of the issues we have gathered from all of your feedback.

We truly appreciate all the great feedback - We see Rise of the Triad as a game we share with the community. A growing game that we help improve together over time.

Personally, I just want to thank you all, for the amazing feedback we have been getting otherwise. It means the world to us!

They're being pretty damned humble about it. I think they make a legit point about the small scale they were working on. Clearly a lot of love went into this game, judging from the clips I've watched. I played it briefly at last year's QuakeCon and thought it was great, reminding me a lot of Quake 3 Arena. I think I'll pick it up once the major patchwork has been completed.

It is? Games like Torchlight 2 and Trine 2 were in a similar price point when they were released, yet they are objectively higher quality products. Also Blood Dragon. You can't really use a game's price as an excuse for everything anymore unless it's really cheap, considering that we're seeing cheap indie titles being released every day.

Also an other WTF point about the game: All the hitscan enemies!? Sure it makes sense from a setting point of view, but what's the point of fast movement when you haven't got projectiles to dodge? More skill less RNG plz.

Also, since when were your own opinions on which games are better "objectively" correct?

Durrrrr. If I say they are better objectively I mean in regards to asset quality, number of bugs, visual fidelity and audio work. Those are things you can very much assess objectively and anyone who claims that RoTT with its numerous glitches and issues is on a same level of quality at release as those aforementioned titles is an idiot.

Finished this game on medium last night, and holy moly This game has some problems. If they fix the numerous bugs and tweak the performance in the next patch, find away to make the enemy mooks stand out from the back ground better and the map editor takes off...

Then we're still left with some atrocious platforming and one of the worst boss battles in a genre known for terrible boss battles :(

When this game works its good silly fun, The core mechanics are 90's shooter through and through, and I actually really liked the map design, but I can't honestly recommend it to people who aren't already on board with the idea of a RotT remake. I really hope that a game comes out that shows the world that there's still room in the modern market for a FPS with 90's design philosophies, but it's not this game. not in it's current state.

since no serious FPS player I've ever known has ever liked checkpoints

Odd thing to say. IME those adamant about quicksaves tend to be more casual, because they value the extra control on their game experience more than they care about tightly controlled balance; whereas "serious" FPS players are the ones more likely to accept checkpoints (and lack of quicksaves) as necessary in some cases to deliver an interesting and cohesive challenge.

Of course there's the much more numerous console guys who "enjoy" checkpoints because "OMG!!1 xBOX ROKCZ!!!!", but are these guys relevant in the context of a relatively obscure PC release?

First guy who misreads this post as me supposedly saying ROTT 2013 checkpointing is all about great balance will get puked on by a karma hobo next time he takes the subway. Just watch.

Some people are complaining about the inability to manage checkpoints in the same way you can manage 'ordinary' saved games. For example, you cannot choose if you want to overwrite your previous checkpoint or not, everything is automated.

Perhaps an adequate compromise would be some kind of save stations or terminals that allow you to save your game at any time, if you want; but you still need to get to the next station in one piece. Save scumming can be avoided by level design that frequently cuts you off from the previous save point.

Plus, there should be an option to save the game at any point and quit immediately. Restoring the saved game that was created this way will delete it.

I hated the checkpointing at first because I was being curmudgeonly and bitter about the fact that dag nabbit I want maahhh owwwn save slots! But honestly as I get better and better at the movement and platforming and covering and enemy spotting, I almost like the checkpointing in that it serves as a truer punishment for failure. The levels aren't actually all that long, and after one or two traversals of a new area, you can pretty much get back to where you failed in a matter of seconds.

Keep in mind my criticism of the check points explicitly mentions the desire for the ability to save as much or as little as preferred, which includes not saving at all. The only appropriate time to save is if you're quitting the game. :P

Honestly, I prefer checkpoints to quicksaves. In my younger days, I basically used quicksaves to cheat - get to a hard section, or to a boss, just save beforehand and play it over and over until you beat it. No strategy involved, just save when you're ahead. My feelings are, I don't want to have to start the whole level over when I died 10 feet from the goal, but I don't want that kind of power put in my own hands because I'll always feel like I'm cheating. Maybe I'm overthinking the matter, but that's just my take on the issue.

Jodwin said:
Durrrrr. If I say they are better objectively I mean in regards to asset quality, number of bugs, visual fidelity and audio work. Those are things you can very much assess objectively and anyone who claims that RoTT with its numerous glitches and issues is on a same level of quality at release as those aforementioned titles is an idiot.

So, mr. hardcore_gamer, you're an idiot. :)

I was going to write another reply explaing why you are wrong, but I guess its probably a fairly pointless exercise if you just call other people who don't agree with you "idots".

I forgot I wanted to reply to this. You've played any of Tom Hall's games, right? It wouldn't be his if it wasn't full to the brim with stupid pop culture references. Internet culture happens to be pop culture, you know.

The framerate is very bad on my 6970 and the visual fidelity surely doesn't justify it.

While I'm sure a lot of you will like the fast speed, it somehow feels weird in a modern game

Everything feels cheap. From the levels, textures but especially the weapons.

Everything seems so disjointed - the visuals are a bit too faithful that they look downright WEIRD. I'm talking about those moving platforms and spike traps, they feel so out of place.

I don't think games like ROTT mark the beginning of the return to the golden era of FPS, game devs shouldn't copy it. I dislike many modern shooters but I can now see why a lot of devs embrace new-school principles. I don't always like it but I get it now.

Guess I've won the coinflip as well, though I've only played the first level so far. No performance issues whatsoever on ludicrous settings on a HD7870.

Music sounds really quiet regardless of what settings I try.

I accidentally exited the map via secret exit, it having a classic ROTT texture wasn't enough of a hint for me.

The first map is indeed quite a faithful representation of the first Dark War map, but I agree with everyone pointing out how unfit the scaling of the map is for the movement speed in the game.

The God Mode powerup was surprisingly weak and uneffective, might be a side effect of how powerful the MP felt. Didn't like how on Ludicrous the only real danger were the blade traps, as every enemy died from just a couple of MP shots. No trouble spotting enemies but the gamma setting is just as weird as the audio slider, at 50 it was so dark that I couldn't see anything in the MP secret while at 60 the brighter spots already looked washed out.